According to Israeli Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, a suspected “terrorist” wanted to crash a Flydubai airline plane. The aim was to “murder the 180 Israelis on board,” Ben-Gvir wrote on Platform Various Israeli media outlets reported, citing passengers on the plane, that one of the pilots injured the other with a knife. Flydubai initially confirmed an “incident” on board.
Flydubai flight FZ1073 was en route from Dubai to Tel Aviv on Wednesday morning. According to the flight tracking service Flightradar24, he sent out a general distress signal in Jordanian airspace. A few minutes later there was a signal with a code that indicated a hijacking, and later the plane sent another general distress signal. Flightradar24 data also shows that the plane abruptly dropped from an altitude of nearly 34,000 feet to less than 17,000 feet within a minute. At 9:45 a.m. the Boeing 737 landed unscheduled at Tabuk Airport in northwestern Saudi Arabia.
According to media reports, passengers helped to overpower the attacker. The mother of an Israeli passenger told the AFP news agency that according to her daughter, one of the pilots tried to stab his colleague with a knife. “My daughter called and said she was in Saudi Arabia,” said Yasmine Abécassis, waiting at Tel Aviv airport. “She said that one pilot tried to kill the other pilot with a knife.” Alerted by loud screams, passengers stormed into the cockpit and “wrestled the guy down,” reported Abécassis.
An Israeli woman told the Israeli television station N12 that there was great fear among the passengers and that there were “screams and panic”. “Some men, including Israelis, stood up and overpowered the attacker,” she said. The passengers are doing well now. “The situation could have ended differently,” she said.
Another Israeli woman told the station that she heard screaming on the plane and then saw a lot of blood in the cockpit. “There were moments when we thought we wouldn’t make it out alive.”
The Israeli news portal “ynet” published a video message that appears to show an Israeli passenger with his face covered in blood on board immediately after the incident. “We have overwhelmed the terrorists,” he said. The landing is imminent. “We need help.”
ynet also reported that the suspected co-pilot came from Oman. However, there was initially no official confirmation of this. It had previously been said that the pilot was of Russian origin and the co-pilot was of Ukrainian origin. According to the Moscow state news agency Tass, the Russian Consulate General in Dubai told the Moscow state news agency that the reports about a Russian pilot in the cockpit did not correspond to the facts. The consulate received information from the airline that there were no Russian citizens on board.
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich demanded in a post on Platform This applies to the attacker as well as to “every state or terrorist organization that sent him”.
In a video message on Wednesday afternoon, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of a “very serious security incident”. Almost all passengers were Israelis. Netanyahu also reported a telephone conversation with one of the passengers. He described to him how the plane started to spin and went into a nosedive. According to the story, the passenger and a crew member managed to get into the cockpit. They then eliminated the attacker while he tried to damage the aircraft's apparatus.
Another crew that was on board went into the cockpit and managed to stabilize the aircraft. Netanyahu expressed his admiration “for the heroes who showed extraordinary presence of mind and daring”: “They saved many lives, they prevented a serious catastrophe.”
The plane landed safely in Saudi Arabia and the attacker was arrested. He is being questioned by the Saudi security authorities. Netanyahu concluded that he had instructed the Israeli security forces to prepare for “potential further threats,” without giving further details.
